Aminet 1 (Walnut Creek)/Aminet - June 1993 [Walnut Creek].iso/aminet/gfx/misc/blurm_11.lha/BlurMotion.ReadIt!

Text File | 1992-11-18 | 15KB | 326 lines

                     The BLUR-MOTION Machine  v1.1

                              11/15/92

                          by Carmen Rizzolo

              An Arexx script for OpalVision and Imagine
                    (or your favorite 3D software)

 ** Read HOW TO USE IT -PART II for the changes from v1.0b to v1.1 **

    This script will controll OpalPaint v1.x and a series of images
to create the illusion of motion blurring.  Everything is automated,
so all you have to do is start it, and watch TV.

    You MUST READ this documentation to understand how to use this
script, and how it works, otherwise you'll be in dark city.

-- INSTALLATION -----------------------------------------------------

    In your C: directory, you must have the program "Wait."  Odds
are, this is already the case.

    Copy the file "BlurMotion.oprx" into your REXX: directory.  If
you are using Workbench 2.0 and do now know where your REXX:
directory is, there's a good chance your S: directory is doubling as
REXX:

    You've gotta tell this script what drawer you are holding Imagine
and your projects in.  There are two ways to do this:

    1) Make an assignment of "Imagine:" (Without the quotes) to the
       drawer that contains Imagine.  And of course, your Imagine
       projects should be in the same drawer that Imagine is in.
       In a shell window, type "Assign Imagine: <path to Imagine>"

    2> Call up your favorite text editor, and load the Blur-Motion
       Machine arexx script.  On line 12, you'll see a line that
       reads "IMPath = 'Imagine:'."  Inside the single quotes,
       change that to the pathname to where you keep your Imagine
       projects.  IMPORTANT!  You MUST have either a colon (:) or
       a slash (/) at the end of the pathname.  If you enter
       something line IMPath = 'Work:Imagine', it's not gonna fly.
       You would instead use IMPath = 'Work:Imagine/'. That will
       fly.                                          ^
              Don't let my punctuation throw you. Don't include it.

    In OpalPaint's main menu pannel, hit EXTRAS.  Then hit AREXX
CONTROL.  Click in the text field of a function key of your choice.
Type in "BlurMotion.oprx" (without the quotes)  To access it, you
simply hold down the Left-Amiga key and the Function Key that you
selected.  The script will activate and you follow instructions from
there.  But be sure to read the rest of the documentation or you'll
be having problems!

    If you use Imagine, skip to the next section.

    The Blur-Motion machine is taylored to work with Imagine.  But
that doesn't mean you can't CHEAT to allow it to work for your
favorite 3D software - as long as it saves it's images in IFF or
IFF24 format.  The only hard part is, your entire animation *MAY*
have to be pre-rendered before you start this script.  That would
require a large hard drive.  You could also render a chunk of it,
convert, delete, and render another chunk.

    Image saves it's images in the following format:

pic.0001 , pic.0002 , pic.0003 , pic.0004 ...

    The images your program saves in must be converted to this format
somehow.  If someone gives me the specifics on how your software
saves it's images, including where it saves them, I might be able to
make an Arexx script to convert them from your format to Imagine's.
    Imagine saves it's images inside two drawers.  These drawers are
inside the drawer that Imagine is located in.  Here's an example:

Work:Imagine/MyProject.imp/HiRes.pix/pic.0001

    Work: is the hard-disk name.
    Imagine is the drawer that Imagine is kept in.
    MyProject is the name of a project an Imagine user defines when
      he starts a new project.  It can be any name, but Imagine always
      adds the extension ".imp" to it. Thus, "MyProject.imp"
    HiRes is a drawer name, also defined by the user, that is used
      to store Imagine's rendered pictures.  Again, Imagine adds the
      extension ".pix" to it.
    pic.0001 is an actual rendered image, not a drawer.

    If you wanted to 'fool' the script into using YOUR images without
actually having Imagine, you would make a drawer tree-structure
similar to the one listed above.  I hope this helped you more than
confused you.


-- BACKGROUND -------------------------------------------------------

    Stop Motion animation has been around for years and years.
Stop-Motion animation involves moving a model slightly, taking a
photograph of the image and moving the model a little more.  When
these photographs where played in rapid succession, of course, the
illusion of motion is created.

    In the early 1980's Industrial Light and Magic was given the
task of animating a model dragon for Disney's move "DragonSlayer."
The Problem: To be scary, this dragon HAD to look real.  The very
best quality Stop-Motion animation can still look "animated."  The
modern audience would not be frightened because they know it's not
real.

    The model dragon was rigged up to computer controlled rods and
wires like an expensive Japanese rod puppet.  The Computer would then
move the model WHILE the film is exposed.  The model moves rather
slowly, so there is blurring during the exposure of each frame.
Enter Go-Motion.  The result was a very convincing dragon, as you may
or may not have seen in the film.

    The Blur-Motion Machine takes an extra amount of 3D rendered
images, and blends them together to create the ILLUSION of motion
blur.


-- HOW TO USE IT ----------------------------------------------------

    Ok, first, create your project as you normally do.  If your
project is going to be broadcasted on television, you would build it
with 30 frames per second in mind.  If your project will be played
directly on the Amiga, using OpalAnimMATE for instance, figure about
18 - 22 frames per second.  Let's say your project is 6 seconds long
at 30 frames per second.  That would be a total of 180 frames.

    Before you render (heh heh) Stretch your animation out to a
whopping *15* times it's original size.  If your animation is 180
frames, it would wind up to be 2700 frames.  Don't worry.  You don't
have to render 2,700 frames.  Read on...

   If you're not using Imagine, you'd have to think ahead.  You might
not be able to stretch events out as easily as you can in Imagine's
Action Editor.  But if you're using Imagine, simply create your
animation as you always do.

    You might want to make a backup of Imagine's staging file.  In
your 'project.imp' drawer, you'll find a file called 'staging.'  Copy
that to RAM:, rename it to 'staging.backup' and copy it back to your
'project.imp' drawer.  This way, if you screw up, you can always
delete the infected staging file, rename 'staging.backup' to
'staging' and you're back in business.

    Grab your calculator!  You can use the workbench calculator, but
it's kind of a pain moving back and forth from Workbench's screen to
Imagine's screen 20 times.  After your backup is complete, enter the
action editor, and multiply the number of frames by 15.  Now here's
the fun part.  Enter EACH and EVERY actor, position, size, alignment,
hinge, and F/X bar and stretch it out to fill your new frame count.

    Multiply all Start Frame: and End Frame: #'s by 15.
    Multiply all Transition Frame Count: #'s by 15.
    Multiply all (De) Acceloration Frames: #'s by 15.
    Multiply all (Ac) Deceloration Frames: #'s by 15.

    Any time you have bars where you have a new bar for each frame
over a series of frames, you would have to increase it's start and
end numbers 15 fold, but each number would be the same.  So you make
the next 'single frame bar' START the frame after the previous
'single frame bar' left off..  Make sense?  This occurence is fairly
rare for Imagine projects, but I've been known to do it a few times.

    Of course, any numbers that account for frame numbers in F/X
parameters would be stretched out 15 fold as well.


-- HOW TO USE IT -PART II -------------------------------------------

    When you're ready to render, you've got two choices here.  I call
them "Method 1" and "Method 2."  Method 1 is the economy way to
render and Method 2 has the better quality quality, but only by two
additional frames.

** NEW for v1.1 **

The Blur-Motion Machine no longer looks for the first frames of a
15-frame group.  The 5 or 7 frams is spread out through the 15-frame
group.  Here is how you will select your frames for rendering:

Method 1:
        In Imagine's project editor, you will click on the RANGE
    button 5 times, entering different range figures each time.  Here
    are the exact entries for the 5 range settings:

    2,(total # of frames),15
    5,(total # of frames),15
    8,(total # of frames),15
    11,(total # of frames),15
    14,(total # of frames),15

Method 2:
        In Imagine's project editor, you will click on the RANGE
    button 7 times, entering different range figures each time.  Here
    are the exact entries for the 7 range settings:

    2,(total # of frames),15
    4,(total # of frames),15
    6,(total # of frames),15
    8,(total # of frames),15
    10,(total # of frames),15
    12,(total # of frames),15
    14,(total # of frames),15

    With your ranges selected, you're ready to render.  Click on the
GENERATE button.

    If you're going to move on and execute PART III of the
documentation before all of your rendering is complete, you may want
to set Imagine's task priority to -1.  You can do this with Steve
Tibbet's program "TaskX"  Ask your local sysop for it.  If Imagine's
task priority is equal to or higher than OpalPaint's task priority,
things will move like maple syrup.


-- HOW TO USE IT -PART III ------------------------------------------

    You do not have to wait for Imagine to finish rendering.
The Blur-Motion Machine will wait for a group of 5 or 7 frames
(Depending on your method) to finish rendering before it processes
them.  Once in OpalPaint, make sure you don't have any spare pages
open.  The Blur-Motion Machine will try to clean up as many spare
pages as possible, but I recommend you start OpalPaint fresh before
executing the script.  Hit the Amiga-FKey combo you defined earlier
to get things rolling.

    The first thing you'll be asked to enter is the Method number.
Enter 1 for economy version, or enter 2 for the highest quality.
If you pick the 7-frame method, you must be rendering 7 frames for
every 15 frame group.  You can't render in one method and
choose the blur with another method.

    Next you enter in the project name.  Again, you do NOT type in
the ".imp" extension OR the path leading up to this drawer.  The
Script will verify this drawer exists before proceeding.

    Now enter the rendering subproject name.  This is the drawer
where Imagine writes it's rendered files.  Omit the ".pix" extension.
The Script will verify this drawer exists before proceeding.

    Next you enter the beginning frame number as a normal number,
not "pic.0001" or "0001", just "1".  You do not have to begin the
script at frame number one.  If you try this script and have a power
failure or a crash, you can begin where you left off.

    -- IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT ENTERING FRAME NUMBERS!!!!! --

    For both start and end frame values entered in this script, the
numbers *MUST* be a first frame number of a group of 15 frames.
Examples: 1,16,31,46,61,76, etc... are all valid.  A simple way to
dig one up is to multiply a number (Say, the original frame count of
your animation before you stretched it), multiply it by 15, then add
1.  If Imagine started rendering at frame .0000, things would be
easier for you.. Sorry life is so complex.

    The Next thing you enter in the script is the ending frame number
as a normal number.  Again, see the paragraph above for more
information.

    Now give a name for a drawer to keep all your 'blurred' images
in.  If this drawer does not exist, the script will effortlessly
create it.  Note, this drawer will be created inside your project's
drawer.  You'll find it in the same place your subproject drawer is
located in.  The script does not automatically place the ".pix"
extension on it.. Hey, there's no reason for it here!  If you want
it to have the ".pix" extension, simply type it that way.

    Now the script will ask you if you want to delete frames as it
goes.  A heartily recommend you say yes.  Frames will NOT be deleted
until The Blur-Motion Machine is done with ONE group of frames and
the final Blurred image is saved.  This way, if you need to abort
and start later, nothing can be accidentally lost.

    From here on out, everything is automated.  You may want to
check up on it once in a while, but everything should be cherry.  I
suggest you do NOT attempt to multi-task while this script is
running.  OpalPaint likes to be up-front while it's doing image
processing.  The only reason to go into the background is to abort
the script.  Just type HI in a shell window and hit return.  The
Blur-Motion Machine will stop shortly afterwards.

    A word about how The Blur-Motion Machine saves it's images...
It saves them in the "pic.000x" format, in numeric order (That's
1,2,3,4,etc...) so OpalAnimMATE will have no trouble reading them.


-- CREDITS ----------------------------------------------------------

    Special Thanks go out to the OpalTech crew.  Thanks for all their
hard work in making the best, most flexible paint software on the
Amiga, with a beefy Arexx port so utilities like these can be made.

    Thanks Marlin Schwanke, for teaching me Arexx, and answering
my questions while I was creating this script.


-- THE INEVITABLE ---------------------------------------------------

    This script is shareware.  If you use it once or twice and like
it, use it with my compliments.  But if you use it professionally in
a paying project, please give me a Check or Money order contribution
of whatever you think it is worth to you.  Is $5 - $15 too much to
ask?

ATT: The Blur-Motion Machine
Strawberry Graphix
4820 Clairemont Mesa Blvd. #5
San Diego, CA.  92117

    If you contribute, and wish to see any changes, improvements,
or direct support for your 3-D software, leave me a note with your
check.  If you wish support for your software, please be as
specific as possible, like the directory structure, and the way your
software formats it's images (Like Imagine does pic.0001, pic.0002,
etc).

-- LEGAL STUFF ------------------------------------------------------

The Blur-Motion Machine is ©1992 Carmen Rizzolo.  All products
mentioned are trademarks of their respective companies.